Friday, November 09, 2007

A connection-based pondering...

Longtime readers know that a bitch adores connecting all manner of shit, so when I read about the release of Iranians who were being detained in Iraq my brain immediately began to connect like connecting is going out of bitness.

Well the United States military released some nine Iranians from detention, some who had been held for years without being charged or tried...which made me ponder the broader issue of detaining people without trial.

Not just people being held at Gitmo…but the 25,800 Iraqis waiting to face charges or be given freedom being detained by the United States in Iraq. About 17,000 of those were captured this year which leaves more than 8,000 people who have been held without trial or charges for over a year.

That shit is disturbing enough, since we should be leading by example…and detaining people without charges or trial is not an example of democracy in action (wince)…but it’s even more disturbing given what we learned during the recent hearings featuring the CEO of Yahoo.

During the hearings Yahoo apologized to the family of a Chinese man who was arrested after Yahoo turned his e-mail information over to the Chinese government. He was arrested, charged and sentenced to jail because Yahoo wanted to kiss the ass of the world’s fastest growing economy.

And that shit made me think of AT&T and how they supplied the United States government with data about American citizens.

People detained without trial…governments collecting private domestic communication information about citizens from corporations…the tragic example of how a government could use that shit against the people…and the terrifying fact that we are considering giving immunity to companies that supply this government with information about citizens when Congress has already turned a blind eye towards the detention of people indefinitely.

So...ummm, eventually corporations will supply the government with information about the masses and the government will be able to detain us at will. Makes that China Yahooian agreement look fair and balanced, doesn't it?

15 comments:

And this post made me think about all the corporation supplied donations to congressional campaigns, which not only leads to votes supporting immunity (whether for spying by telecoms, negligence by manufactures, or poisoning by toy makers and food suppliers).

How long before corporations run our country and the world, if they don't already?

I feel the need for some Excedrin migraine formula and a shot of fresh coffee before the full onset of TGIF migrainism hits.

....aah yes, a bitch is keenly aware.............smells fascist, doesn't it? Dandy wonders if--- given this governments' pandering to Mushariff's (sp) dictatorship in Pakistan (in the interest of fighting terriorism)---have we began witnessing the last days of of democratic government as we've known it???

I think its a little scarier even than you say here. I honestly believe that there is a real desire among *some* corporate types to take more power than they already have.

Note how they can already make congress and the President dance to their tune more often than not. Given enough opportunity, I can see our country turning into One Nation, Under Exxon, With Cash and Profits for Capitalists.

Yah, I may be a little melodramatic there, but I do not trust corporations one bit. They've proven time and again they cannot be trusted, both with the way they treat their workers, the environment, and of course, any of us who dare to stand up to them. (It may be career damaging here in the US - but overseas people get killed for going against corporations. Look at Coca Cola and Columbia. Scary stuff)

Try being disabled all your life, literally since age 10 and having been through the entire SSA Disability process before, complete with the two turn downs and a hearing. Try working with a lifetime illness in America , along with that SSA order that says you are disabled. You will find that should you get sick again after an imaginary line of five years of protection, that you loose everything you work for. Yes you heard me. SSA ignores their previous court awards. Can divorce orders be ignored too? Can property awards be ignored? Nope only by corrupt activist Judges. Now those Judges are being protected by elected Republicans. So as I see it, Neocons couped the entire Republican party and that party is re writing laws in odd and unusual ways, like a Social Security disability hearing.Think about it this way: I lost two long term disability policies that I was lucky enough to have. I lost the right to have insurance when my Cobra ended in my state because SSA had not " heard the case". I lost my right to a fair hearing when they ignored that court award. I lost my Medicare and Medicare Part D in retaliation.So the USA? Gone poof.... I feel like I live in a textbook I read in the eight grade about the Soviet Union.

We changed our phone # recently switching from vonage to comcast. My wife has a cc w/ chase. They called my brother's wife in DE who has the same name, our next door neighbor, and my father in law looking for my wife. When she spoke w/ chase they admitted to doing this and said they accessed the numbers through our phone records looking for commonly called numbers. Is this even legal?